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Today, 80% of the 17,850 remaining residents are white, still making it one of West Virginia’s most diverse counties. It’s also the poorest, with some of the lowest graduation and life expectancy rates in the nation. A third of all McDowell County residents live in poverty. The per capita income is $15,474. Over the years, the county lost big box stores, schools, thousands of jobs and people. But it still had its newspaper — one that tracked government spending, published elections, spelling bee and basketball game results and spreads with color photos and biographies of every member of the graduating class. Now, because many older residents don’t use the internet, they are missing crucial information the newspaper would have reported on. A pandemic-era meal service for seniors was cut, and there was no easy way to inform residents. People who relied on the obituaries have struggled keeping up with loved ones’ deaths. “Now when people die, a lot of people don’t even realize they’re dead,” said Deputy Magistrate Court Clerk Virginia Dickerson, 79, while on a break outside her office, watching coal trucks lumber by. Dickerson, who delivered the paper when she was growing up, said losing the paper was like “losing a family member.” “Anything that happen usually in the community and anywhere in McDowell County, it would be in that paper. Without no paper, you can’t find out nothing,” she said. Paulina Breeden, who works behind the counter at the sole gas station in the neighboring community of Maybeury, said people still come in and ask about the paper. She’s the one who has to inform them it’s closed. They’re often incredulous. “They say, ‘Oh, really? Are you serious?’ I mean, they were shocked,” she said. Breeden said she trusted the information she read in The Welch News: “You hear a lot, and I know maybe in there it’s not the actual truth,” she said of rumors around town. “Let’s just read the newspaper.” The political and socioeconomic implications of the newspaper’s closure are widespread, but not always immediately visible. Although the county is now without a local news source, residents are no strangers to news coverage — often by national outlets that focus on the poverty rate, opioid use, infrastructure woes and the declining coal industry. The paper was a vital platform for residents to tell their story from their perspective — a lifeline for a community that’s often been misrepresented and misunderstood. Shawn Jenkins, a pharmacy owner who works down the street from The Welch News, said he feels national coverage of McDowell County — and West Virginia in general — is overly “political, unfair and often negative.” But he never felt that way about the local newspaper. “I never saw anything that really raised my hackles. I thought they were pretty much center line, which is the exception these days,” he said, adding that he advertised in the paper. “I wanted them to survive.” Before Nester took over in 2018, the paper ran summaries of local government meetings written up by a county employee. That changed when 32-year-old Derek Tyson, the paper’s single reporter and editor, began covering meetings. The attention seemed to bother some local officials, who would call late at night to grumble about stories. The city of Welch declined to comment on the newspaper’s closure. Without the paper and its journalist asking questions, residents are going to find it harder to stay informed about things that matter locally, Nester said. “I think that’s unfair to the people that live in the community,” she said. One of the major stories the paper was following for years is the work of the McDowell Public Service District, which focuses on upgrading systems in coal communities with aging infrastructure. For decades, some people in the county relied on mountain streams polluted with mine runoff because of disintegrating — or completely absent — systems. Others, like those in the majority-Black community of Keystone, lived under a boil water advisory for 10 years — a nearly unheard-of length of time — until the district replaced the water lines under two years ago. Now, long-awaited federal support is expected to go out to communities with the passage of the historic bipartisan infrastructure act. But the paper won’t be there to cover it. The void created by the disappearance of The Welch News is being filled by cable news and social media, something that deeply concerns Tyson. Much of what he sees circulating locally on Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets is unverified. The newspaper used to act as a counter to that misinformation. During last year’s May primary, rumors ran rampant on Facebook about election tampering after some residents arrived at long-time precincts on voting day to find their names missing from the poll books. Tyson wrote multiple stories digging into the claims and clarifying that the confusion was caused by an issue with the West Virginia Secretary of State’s voter database. Although people were forced to vote in different locations or to cast provisional ballots, all votes were counted. During one meeting among local officials discussing the issue, a county commissioner said he believed the lack of daily news sources in the county contributed to the misinformation’s spread. He credited The Welch News for its work. When Nester was raising her three children as a single mother in the 1990s and 2000s, the county’s older residents would stop by her house on surprise visits with meals and cash they’d tape to her front door. Many of the people who read the newspaper are aging, she said. During her time at the newspaper, delivery drivers would drop off bread and milk with The Welch News at some houses, along with other essentials. “I saw keeping the paper going as a way to repay them — or to try to — for everything they did to take care of me,” she said. ___The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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